When I was researching questions to use in my dietitian study guide apps, I came across this topic called the Menu Engineering Grid.  This is a tool used by restaurant managers to evaluate foods in a specific category, the appetizers category for example. They look to see how each item does in comparison with others in the group in terms of its popularity and profitability. Depending on where an item falls on the grid, there are several recommendations on how to improve upon the item’s popularity and/or profitability. As the name says, this is a tool commonly used in the food industry, but I’ll show you how you might be able to incorporate this tool into your business practices.  The menu engineering grid looks like this below:

The x-axis shows the profitability, and the y-axis is the popularity.  You see there are 4 quadrants to the grid.

• Stars (upper-right):  Items that are very profitable and very popular. Goal:  Maintain the quality of the item since it is selling well and bringing in good revenue. Recommendations: No change to the item or maybe experiment with slight price increases.
• Horses (upper-left): Items that are very popular but not very profitable. Goal: Find ways to increase the profit margin. Recommendations: Try a price increase and/or using less expensive materials.  Now, digital goods really don’t use materials, per se. However, maybe a plugin could be considered a material for an app. If you purchase a plugin, you can look at using less expensive plugins that perform the functions you need, you can write the plugin yourself, or you can renew the plugin every other year instead of annually.  For me, I wouldn’t mess with the plugins. They’re working and hopefully are being updated to meet the needs of current Xojo releases and the latest operating systems. Plus, you’re helping out other small business developers by buying their products. Instead, I would recommend slight price increases for this category. People are already buying your app and haven’t been complaining about the price.
• Puzzles (lower-right): Items that are highly profitable but not very popular. Goal: Find ways to increase the popularity of the items without sacrificing the profitability too drastically. Recommendations: See if a slight decrease in the selling price brings in more sales. Other strategies include finding a new focus area of the app or maybe marketing it better on your website and social media.
• Dogs (lower-left): These items are not profitable and not popular. Recommendations: Don’t waste your time or money with improving these items and consider removing them from sale.

Next in the image, take note to the vertical and horizontal lines that separate the quadrants. These are not arbitrarily added. They’re calculated. Without getting into too much detail, the horizontal line separating the upper and lower quadrants is known as the popularity line and is calculated as 70% of the expected popularity:

Popularity line = 100% / total number of items X 70%

The vertical line separating the left and right quadrants is known as the average contribution margin, which is simply the sum of all item contribution margins divided by the total number of items.

The plot points utilize the popularity index (y-coordinate) and contribution margin (x-coordinate).

Popularity index = number of an item sold / total number of all items sold X 100

Contribution margin = selling price – item costs

Technically, the item costs of digital goods are essentially low. What are you actually buying for each item sold? Probably nothing, unless you are distributing on a removable media source. Maybe you are selling on your website and use a credit card processor. For example, I use PayPal, and for each sale made on my website, PayPal collects 2.9% + $0.30 per transaction. You might also count the salary you pay yourself towards the item cost. There can be a lot of work to determine the item cost of apps since the costs associated are not as cut and dry as the food industry, for example.

So how can you, as an independent developer, utilize this tool? Allow me to share a real-world example. An example of my own business. I’ll show you how I utilized the menu engineering grid in some of my apps with actual before and after data.

I have three standalone study guide apps for students to prepare for the registered dietitian exam:

• Study Suite: By far my most popular product, accounting for over 85% of revenue. This product contains multiple study modules, providing students with different forms of studying and keeping them engaged in an interactive format.
• Flash Cards: An electronic version of flash cards. This product sells for $150.  The year prior to any changes, I sold 37 units, resulting in $5,550 for the year.
• Hanging with Nutrition: A hangman style game. This sells for $150. Year prior to changes had a whopping 13 units sold, resulting in $1,950 for the year.

Analysis: Study Suite is a star. While each of the three apps did bring in a profit, Flash Cards and Hanging run quite low on the popularity scale, falling into the puzzle category. Students understand Flash Cards is a method of studying, but maybe this is priced too high. Students may not understand Hanging with Nutrition is meant for study purposes, plus, this is priced too high.

Changes: Keep Study Suite as is since this is very popular and profitable. With both Flash Cards and Hanging with Nutrition, I decreased the prices of each to $100 and $50, respectively. In addition, I incorporated both products into Study Suite as separate add-on products. Now students continue to purchase Study Suite as their main study app. They can trial the two add-on products and see the value of the products and if these are something they want to include. The reduced price also entices students to make a purchase.

Post-change evaluation: The year after the price decrease plus incorporation of the apps as add-ons returned the following:

• Flash cards sold 113 units at $100 each for a total of $11,300 for the year.  More than 3 times the number of units and just over double the revenue from the previous year!
• Hanging with Nutrition sold 64 units at $50 each for a total of $3,200 for the year.  About one and a half times the revenue, plus over 300% increase in the popularity!
• I think the changes were quite successful with increasing the popularity of both apps.  Plus, I not only maintained the profitability, but actually increased it in both, even with a selling price decrease.

In terms of profitability, all apps should be considered profitable as long as they have helped bring in adequate revenue to cover your costs to develop the apps, such as your Xojo license and other licenses you may need to make your awesome apps. If you cover your costs and don’t even sell one more app during the year, you can essentially sit back and just let the app remain without any updates, maybe even for the unforeseeable future. But this isn’t ideal. Operating systems change, bugs are always being discovered, and let’s face it, as you grow, so does your knowledge in developing. In order to maintain the high quality of your apps and improve them, it must be worthwhile to you to continue working on them.  If I hadn’t changed up the way I market Hanging with Nutrition, I wouldn’t see 13 users per year on that product worth the time and effort to maintain it, at least regularly. Though when the number of students who are buying the product annually increases five-fold, it makes my decision of investing my time in keeping these apps up to date much easier.

Take this lesson as you will. Many of you probably have dozens of apps or more. How well are your apps selling? How are they priced for the market? Priced compared to the competition, if any? Do any of these serve a similar purpose and may benefit as an add-on or as an in-app purchase to another app? While we have some downtime in the world today, take a moment and evaluate your apps. Come up with a marketing plan, implement it, and see what happens. Don’t be afraid of change. Some small tweaks can have a big impact on your small business.  

Good luck, and stay safe and healthy.

Ryan Hartz has been a Xojo user for over 10 years. He is a registered dietitian with no formal education in software development, illustrating that anyone can learn development in Xojo with its ease of use and understandable language. In 2005, Ryan started his company, Visual Veggies Software, which offers software study guides to young nutrition students preparing to become registered dietitians.

2020 is going to be a very exciting year for Xojo – we finally see the finish line for several of our multi-year projects! Starting now you can watch Geoff’s 2020 Update to get an overview of what’s been going on behind the scenes at Xojo and what to expect this year. Then, check out our Android update with Paul and Web 2.0 with Greg videos below!

The 2020 Xojo Design Award Winners are:

Best Consumer App – HDRtist NX

Ohanaware: A detail-oriented High Dynamic Range Imaging app for MacOS X.

Best iOS App – PropertyMe Manager

PropertyMe: The PropertyMe Manager app gives property managers access to their portfolio wherever they are.

Best Lifestyle App – Crossword Wizard

Rush Software: Create and play crossword games.

Best Developer Tool – RegExRX

MacTechnologies Consulting: A cross-platform Regular Expression development tool.

Best Vertical Market App – qwireCast

qWire: Desktop app to help Hollywood casting director make cast lists.

Best Vertical Market App – bMD Medical Software*

bMD biomedical Developments SRL: Medical practice management software.

Best Plugin – MBS Plugins

MonkeyBread Software: This huge toolbox for Xojo developers includes thousands of classes, controls and examples to extend Xojo.

*Yes, there are two Best Vertical Market Apps, they were both so good we had no choice but to award them both!

Another reason this conference will be different has to do with the name change from The Xojo Developer Conference to XOJO.CONNECT. If you have ever been to one of our conferences before, how would you describe it? I guarantee one of the things you’d say is how important the connections you made and the conversations you had outside of the sessions were. The name change is to show that we do understand how valuable that aspect is to you (it’s extremely valuable to us) and we will be adding more opportunities to nurture those connections in Nashville.

The access you get to the Xojo Team is another thing that makes the conference exceptional. I talked to someone recently who told me one of the reasons he enjoys coming year after year is so he can give Greg his wishlist. Meeting the Xojo team in person is great for those who depend on Xojo. For example, we can arrange for you to sit down one on one and go through any issues you are having or talk about your specific feature requests. From engineering to marketing to support, we are all energized by the conversations we have with you at the conference, we love to see what you’re working on and we go back with so many ideas. One user said the week after the conference is the witching hour of Xojo developers, going home with tons of new ideas ready to implement into their projects, but for us — we have a conference post-mortem meeting where we share what we learned, what feedback we got — both good and bad — what new ideas we have. My to-do list triples, because I’m inspired by all of you.

Even though the conference is so much more than just the sessions, the sessions are still a very important part of it. We have a wide range of topics from a wide range of speakers. Many of the speakers, myself included, are first time Xojo conference speakers. New speakers, of course, mean new topics and fresh new perspectives. Some of the first-time speakers added to our lineup include Wayne Golding, who is joining us all the way from New Zealand, to talk about Windows service apps. Ryan Hartz of Visual Veggies Software who will talk about building and maintaining a software business. Ryan has been to several conferences and has been a guest blog writer on our blog, but this is his first time speaking. I heard Stefanie Juchmes talk about the MBS Plugins at the conference in Germany, and she will be speaking about SceneKit in Nashville. Zeke Burke attended his first Xojo conference last year (see him on our highlights video) and he will be talking about multi-platform web design. Our newest engineer, Javier Menendez, will be talking about Blobs – this will be his second US Xojo conference. We have a great lineup of sessions and no matter how much experience you have, we guarantee you’ll learn something new.

During the day, we have built more time into the schedule so you can have post-session conversations and the evenings will offer even more time to connect. It’s great to get to know one another in a more relaxed setting. With that goal in mind, we will take busses over to the new and highly popular 6th & Peabody where you can relax in a casual environment with a cold beer and tacos from the White Duck Tacos Shop truck. You can have a game of bean bag toss on the lawn or enjoy some retro games in the arcade! Plus there will be a Moonshine tasting for anyone who is interested…

The next night we will go down to the Honkey Tonk Highway (ye-haw) for some classic Nashville entertainment at Nashville Underground. After dinner, you can take our buses back to the hotel or explore the rest of the popular area and Uber back with your friends later. If all of this isn’t enough, we have a special treat for those staying Friday night – a pub crawl of the 2nd street district coordinated by a pub crawl professional. I said it before and I’ll say it again – this is where the “you-had-to-be-there” jokes get made. Remote Debugger!

Nashville is a new city for our conference, but one that has been highly requested. In fact, it has made our top 3 possible cities list for the last 4 years! Our conference has travelled to many different cities now, including (save this for trivia) Austin, Orlando, Las Vegas, Houston, Denver, Miami … and now Nashville. Nashville is one of America’s most popular cities, with so much to offer, even if you don’t like country music. I’ve watched the Bourdain episode, I’m ready to try some of Nashville’s famous hot chicken!

There really is no substitute for in person connections – whether it is something you decide to do to get out of your comfort zone or for new ideas, you will — as they say — be amongst friends. Last year a first time conference attendee said, “I decided to come because I really needed to connect with the developer community.” Agreed! For me, I love spending a week connecting with the Xojo community, having in person conversations, and seeing my co-workers (who I video chat with daily) in person! I love it!

We always try to pick a hotel that has about 400 rooms or less, so you will run into conference attendees frequently around the property. From the time you arrive you’ll see posts on the forum or on Twitter (also via the conference app) that people are hanging out in the lobby or restaurant or bar. Let us know when you arrive, Alyssa and I and other Xojo staffers will be around all week, and we will see you in the bar at 7 on Tuesday for early conference registration – if we don’t see you before.

If you’re not currently registered, we still have room and we have seen a number of flight deals recently from Frankfurt, London, New York City and more. Plus, you can still get our fantastic conference hotel rate though February 24th. This is going to be a great conference and a very exciting year for Xojo!

EAT LOCAL

If you like amazing pancakes enough to stand in line for an hour, The Pancake Pantry is for you. Locals say your patience will be repaid in the most delicious breakfast cakes. Ready for lunch? Head on down the Natchez Trace Parkway, the forest-lined road that was once the Natchez Trace Trail while getting into the country mood with Kacey Musgrave’s Biscuits. Next stop is The Loveless Cafe, “Nashville’s Biscuit”, for Southern cooking from the country ham to the red-eye biscuits. Brown’s Diner is mentioned in a lot of places but the website is down…which could be a good sign if you are looking for local favorites.

HOT CHICKEN

The official food of Nashville gets its own section. You can get Nashville Hot Chicken throughout the city, but if you want the source, the original, you go to Prince’s. Local will also swear by Hattie’s. Want to eat all the hot chickens? The Hot Damn! Hot Chicken and Beer Jeep Tour could be your dream come true.

DRINK

Visit local distilleries for whiskey (and other liquors too, I guess). The Corsair Distillery is the first craft distillery in Nashville since prohibition. And of course there is the Jack Daniels Distillery. Not interested in driving there? Jump on the Nashville to Jack Daniel’s Distillery Bus Tour.

GET MOVING

Cut a rug at Robert’s Western World. In true country fashion, this honky-tonk has just enough room for you to take a spin on the dance floor. Or just check out the scene while enjoying their Recession Special – a fried bologna sandwich, chips and a PBR for just $6!

If beers and bikes are more your speed, check out the Nashville Pedal Tavern. Their party bike is BYOB and a not-lazy and affordable way to experience Nashville, from Broadway to Music Row.

TAKE A TROLLEY

Night Trolley, Day Trolley, 2 Day Trolley, Music City Trolly

LEARN

Bicentennial Capitol Mall State Park is a state park inside the city, under the shadow of the state capitol building and near the Tennessee State Museum and the Nashville Farmers’ Market. The park is lovely place to learn about Tennessee history without being stuck inside.

The Country Music Hall of Fame showcases the history of country music, featuring a variety of changing exhibits plus performances. From guitars to cars, the recent expansion offers more space to explore the permanent collection, which includes stage costumes, 600 instruments and hundreds of other objects.

GET SCARED, XOJO PUB CRAWL

Join a crew of Xojo people for a haunted pub crawl on Friday night after XOJO.CONNECT.

If you haven’t registered for XOJO.CONNECT in Nashville yet, grab your spot today! If you have already registered make sure you have booked your room at the Sheraton Music City and shine your boots because it’s only 63 days away! Finally, I’ll to wrap this up with a personal recommendation. You don’t get more Nashville than Dolly Parton and if you want to get a feel for the local color of Tennessee, and it’s most famous city, Dolly Parton’s America will give you that.

In marketing, we drive traffic, conversions and brand awareness with content. Blogs can be great for communicating about your product when it is in development, like if you have a huge project in the works that your customers are really excited about. They can also be venues for you to comment on happenings in your industry. Establish your product and yourself as a subject matter expert, your blog will then be a great vehicle to build trust with prospects through your content.

Don’t start a blog if you’re not committed. You are going to need to maintain it regularly, but it’s up to you to commit to the schedule that is reasonable for you to maintain. Start small, one to two posts a month. Set a schedule for yourself so you have plenty of time to take a break from coding and focus on writing a valuable piece of marketing content. Go a step further (and make it easy on yourself) by writing up several blog posts before you launch so you can draw from your bank when it’s time to post.

For your first post, start simple and write a launch post to boast about the features of your product/service, showcase screenshots, videos, and a link to download or purchase. This post will be a great piece of content that you can repurpose. Because when you have all of this great content – why only put it in one place? Use it in your other marketing channels, like on social media, email blasts, presentations (remember, I said before that I was going to talk about this in my presentation!), etc. Also, once you have created your content you can also post it on third-party sites, like Medium, LinkedIn, or you could even turn it into a slideshow if that makes sense. From those other places, you can link directly to your landing page, bringing it full circle. Your content about your app made it out to the world and brought some prospects in – sweet!

When blogging, take things into consideration that can help your SEO, like your target keywords, making sure the content you create is quality and try to put it into places where you can gain some quality backlinks.

One great thing to remember about blogging (and on your landing page or website in general) is that you always want to offer a call to action. For a blog post about your newest release with a video, end your post by saying, “Check out our new video now!” Or if you just announced your company conference, make sure to offer – “Learn more about the 2020 conference!” (shameless XOJO.CONNECT plug – you really should be there). You always want to offer more content to keep people on your site.

Did you know that B2C companies that blog generate 88% more leads per month than those who do not? Given that fact – why not try it out and see how it works for you? Prospects need to see your messages 7 times in order for them to resonate or take action, so don’t let your beautiful content go to waste – repurpose, share and enjoy a bump in your traffic and hopefully, downloads!